We can't tell you how many times we've heard the following: "I thought doing the music and making the album was the hard part. Turns out that getting the cover together and designing the packaging is harder!"

The reason for this is that you know music, but may not know about computer graphic file formats, dots-per-inch requirements, and Acrobat distiller files! (well perhaps another kind of distiller… ahem) Well at Group Effort we strive to be a full service kinda place! We can also help you get together cover art, design and layout ideas and guide you through the process of making a product out of your project.

Bill Gwynne is our man in this department and has done more than 50 covers for our clients in recent years. Cost for his services are $45/hr and a typical CD cover design & layout takes between 3 and 7 hours.

However, this is the computer age and if you are savvy with design software like Photoshop, and know either Adobe InDesign (coming on strong) or Quark Express (on it's way out) there is no reason why you can't do most or all of this yourself!

Bill has prepared a document that details just exactly what you have to get together in order to have all the elements necessary to do a CD Package. This will at least tell you what all the elements are so you can decide what you want in each spot, then bring it all to Bill and he will assemble it all for you and produce computer files that the CD plant will use to make your CDs and print your project.